After 20+ years, the last @ESA @Planck paper has been accepted, and we’ll be commemorating the event… with a Zoom meeting tomorrow of the only remaining official committee, the Planck Editorial Board.
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Imperial mathematician Martin Hairer scoops $3m Breakthrough Prize.
Really digging @XTheBand‘s Alphabetland, like, I guess, everyone else (of a certain age, at least, because who else would care, really?).
Aside: Am I the only who really loves See How We Are?
I never understood why you might want the title in the header of every page until our two-year old starting tearing up the books.
The government continues to implicitly & explicitly encourage all sorts of risky behaviour (e.g., flights, restaurants) which seems likely to bring an autumn (read: school-time) resurgence of the virus. Holidaymakers’ plans in disarray after quarantine imposed on Spain
Why aren’t face coverings compulsory in the UK? There’s no social or governmental pressure at all. At least it’s controversial in the US — no one even talks about it here.
Thinking, as I do every year on the Summer solstice, of venturing at dawn with @disquiet to join Sun Ra and Don Cherry welcoming the sun at the southern tip of Manhattan.
Not sure how to process this from my undergrad alma mater. It actually seems that they are admitting to systemic racism but are unwilling to call it that.
Yale Astronomers Said Their Department Isn’t Racist Because They Hired One Black Employee In 1985
Welcome triumph of privacy over a centralised database — from an institution with a very bad IT track record. UK virus-tracing app switches to Google-Apple model – BBC News
This Wednesday, we @ImperialAstro will cancel our regular (virtual) seminar to support #ShutDownSTEM and #Strike4BlackLives, instead holding a discussion of issues of race and anti-black racism in astrophysics, science, academia — and the wider world.
I’m also happy to report that @ImperialPhysics has postponed its monthly staff meeting in further support and solidarity.
After a day by the beautiful Thames, overcrowded & difficult to social-distance, flabbergasted that the UK govt isn’t pushing masks much more strongly (yes, mostly for others, not the wearer). Mayor @SadiqKhan is there an opportunity for you to step up, for London at least?
After pointing out just yesterday how many hundreds of miles we’d cycled together without a flat…
Goose with somewhere to go.
Weekday bread 🍞
Rosemary bread, glazed ham, roasted asparagus, Good Ordinary White.
Floating flowers
R.I.P. John Erhardt, Guitarist for Wussy and Ass Ponys. Wussy is one of the great rock ‘n’ roll bands of our time. The band and their UK label will be hosting a watch party tonight (11
May) showing their great 2016 London gig in his memory.
Of course we understand what they’re really getting at, but in (I guess) an effort to make things more understandable for most (?) people, the government has made it more confusing for anyone remotely numerate.
“But for countries trying to go it alone, like the UK, the restrictions could literally be fatal.”
Without Apple and Google, the UK’s contact-tracing app is in trouble – The Verge
New loaf and new wall. 🍞
Have any of my scientist-friends out there used juno and/or junoconnect to run python/jupyter notebooks on the iPad?
Sir Roger @Penrose on Conformal Cyclic Cosmology @PhilFacOx. Loved watching old-school transparencies on an old-school whiteboard in front of his laptop camera. Lovely talk, ‘tho I’m unconvinced by the theory itself — and he’s wrong about it being confirmed by Planck data.
This week with strong flour. 🍞 #lockdownloaf
That feeling when you don’t get an accolade you didn’t think you deserved, but are still disappointed…
Now that we’re debating how to end the lockdowns, someone’s going to have to start explaining decision theory. #WhatsYourLossFunction?
We’ve done scones, cookies, and cakes, but this is our first bread #lockdownloaf
Thanks — and hello — to old friends @robsheff, @RealJoeLevy, @audiation for bringing me your fantastic interview with @rxgau (the dean of rock critics, in case you didn’t know). Nothing else has brightened my day so much of late… #Nadine
RIP music producer Hal Willner. Best known for his work on #SaturdayNightLive and with Lou Reed, Lucinda Williams, &c, but my favourite was his Brecht-Weill tribute album from ‘85, Lost in the Stars.
R.I.P. Margaret Burbidge, who has passed away at 100. She was at the forefront of our understanding of at least two fields in astrophysics: the synthesis of the elements in stars, and our understanding of quasars, some of the most distant objects in the Universe.